Life
?1727-1812; comic actor, specialising in Irish roles; b. Cork, son of hairdresser called Cochran, he went to Jamaica and made money as an actor; first appeared in London in 1759 and acted chiefly at Drury Lane till 1796 [var. 1804: DIB]; on retirement, to Barnes Common, made a good living as a market gardener. ODNB DIB
Criticism
See Joseph Th. Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fior-Ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality, Its Development and Literary Expression Prior to the Nineteenth Century (John Benjamins Pub. Co., Amsterdam & Philadelphia, 1986), 162f.
Commentary
G. C. Duggan, The Stage Irishman (Dublin: Talbot 1937), quotes: quotes from Churchill’s Rosciad lines commending Ireland in general, and John Moody in particular, “Moody we praise with all the warmth we can / When he depicts the Irish gentleman: / Long from a nation ever hardly used, / At random censured, wantonly abused, / have Britons drawn their sport with partial / view, Formed general notions from the rascal few, / Condemned a people as for vices known, / Which from their country banished seek our own. / At length, however, the slavish chain is broke, / and sense awakened scorns her ancient yoke, / Taught by thee, Moody, we now learn to raise, / Mirth from their foibles, from their virtues praise.’ (Duggan, op. cit., p. 176.)
[ top ]